Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper 'flipped' homes three times: MPs' expenses

Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper, the husband and wife Cabinet ministers, “flipped”
the designation of their second home to three different properties within
the space of two years.

Yvette Cooper and Ed BallsPhoto: Heathcliff O'Malley

By Rosa Prince, Political Correspondent

7:00AM BST 15 May 2009

After being elected to Parliament for the first time in 1997, Miss Cooper, now the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, designated a modest property in her constituency of Castleford, west Yorkshire, as her second home, and began claiming mortgage interest payments on her parliamentary allowances.

In May 2005, after Mr Balls was elected MP for Normanton, Miss Cooper “flipped” her second home to the family house she shared with her husband and their three children in south London. The couple both began claiming a half share of the £1,466 mortgage interest, a sum of £733 each compared with the £530 she had been paying in Yorkshire.

Two years later, in May 2007, the couple moved again, to a larger, £655,000 property in north London which they designated their second home. Their mortgage interest payments increased to just over £1,031 each.

They also put the bill for the £2,000 cost of removal vans and men on their parliamentary expenses.

At one point, Miss Cooper and Mr Balls, the Children’s Secretary and a close ally of Gordon Brown, had their expenses docked, after each submitted two monthly claims for mortgage interest of nearly £1,300.

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At the time, their mortgage statements showed the interest-only element of their mortgage stood at £733.

Officials also warned them that they had submitted the same claim, for the month of July 2006, twice. During much of the period covered by the records seen by The Daily Telegraph, Mr Balls and Miss Cooper submitted regular claims for food, usually totalling up to £600 a month.

MPs are entitled to claim up to £400 a month on their second-home allowance, but by both taking advantage of this rule, the couple were able to claim substantially more for a single household.

In total, they claimed £24,400 between them on their second-home allowance, slightly more than the £23,000 that could have been paid to an individual MP but less than the £46,000 maximum for two members.

In June 2008, Mr Balls and Miss Cooper were referred to the parliamentary sleaze watchdog over the designation of their second home, amid suggestions that it was improper for them to claim on the family house in London, where they lived during the week.

After an investigation, John Lyon, the Standards Commissioner, exonerated them. He said that he accepted that their motivation was not profit, as they paid full capital gains tax following their move.

The couple said: “After taking the advice of the Fees Office in May 2005, Yvette changed the designation of her second home to London.

“Since then, we have claimed for regular bills which we split 50-50. We did move house in London. But in the two years following our move, we have claimed less than in the two years prior to our move. In July and August 2006 there was an inadvertent error in filling out our ACA forms. This mistake was spotted by the fees office and the correct amount was paid.”